Les Misérables fusion AU. Yao Wang, an ex-convict from the chain gang, has finished his nineteen years of servitude and, after an encounter with Mother Yekateryna Chernenko, seeks to change his life. Helena Karpusi, a young working woman with an illegitimate child, turns to prostitution to pay the people keeping him. And finally, in the city of Bendición, a group of young socialist revolutionaries prepare for a brighter future amidst poverty and ever-rising social unrest.

Contains violence, prostitution, child abuse/neglect, and massive amounts of character death. Valjean!China, Javert!America, Fantine!Ancient Greece, Cosette!Italy, Marius!Germany, Eponine!Nyo!Belarus, Thenardier!Netherlands, and Enjolras!France. Set in roughly the West Coast of the United States, in an analogue of 1914-1935.

GerIta, FrUK, Rome/Ancient Greece, Netherlands/Fem!France, Fem!Sweden/Fem!Finland, and other minor pairings.

In high summer, the road to Joshua Flat is not cracked, because to crack it would have had to be mud at some point. Instead it is dry dust which stirs into clouds beneath the feet and wheels of sparse traffic, bounded at the edges by dried-up crabgrass.

The road itself has changed in the decades between the events and the description, for this was before the great roads, but the surroundings have not: the dry valley in which the road travels is still surrounded by low hills burnt gold in the sun, which from afar wave as though covered with long grass and wheat, but on closer inspection prove to be short, brittle grasses beneath shining waves of heat. Between them, the road follows the curve of the short valley until the hills die away and the horizon stretches full of blue sky hazing around the edges, through which distant mountains are faintly, faintly visible.

After the hills, Joshua Flat rises from the hazy, dusty plain. It is not a terribly large town, one of those that grows on the periphery of a ranch. The buildings are roughly equally divided between off-white stucco and peeling boards, clustered around a few streets.

It is towards this town that a man walks.

He is short and wiry, black hair pulled back in a matted queue, and his clothing is nondescript at best and grimy at worst. Dust coats him — he has obviously traveled a long way, and his shoes are an indescribable shade of dust and cheap shoe polish, cracking and coming apart.

Behind him the mountains do not tower. They are not majestic, towering, craggy behemoths; instead hovering low to the ground, tan with dirt and brown-black with scrub-brush, ridged and crinkling and folded with innumerable dry stream-beds, hovered over by thin streaks of cloud either grey with dust or white and flattened. The road winds down from the sun-baked heights, smelling of aching heat and dried dust. The man, too, smells of heat and dust and sweat.

He walks straight ahead, doggedly, eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun. There is a small, yellowing canvas pack slung across his back. The road is empty except for him and the small, trailing cloud of dust which adds to the shimmering heat waves on all sides. The high afternoon sun flattens everything beneath its light.

Loping straight ahead, the man heads for Joshua Flat with the determination of someone who has no other choice.

A little after six o'clock, this man enters the town of Joshua Flat. Nobody in the town recognizes him; he did not get off the train since one hasn't made a stop here for two weeks, he's unlikely to be a ranch-hand, he's not related to anybody.

The man trudges into the town hall, which barely warrants the name. Five minutes after he comes back out, everybody in Joshua Flat knows exactly who he is.

There is a tiny train-stop restaurant in Joshua Flat, and it is not crowded when the man enters it. A cluster of off-work ranch-hands gather around a few tables, and flies buzz around the screen door — not too fast, even flies slow in this heat — and the cigarettes in their little cardboard boxes seem to droop next to the hard candies all stacked in the closed display case. Smells hang in the air, the desert winds have not come yet — smell of grease from the kitchen, smell of oil, smell of thousands of acres of dirt and cows up north, all move only by the swinging shut of the door after the man steps through. He sits heavily down at the counter, and the woman behind it gives him a cool, appraising look.

Dark eyes return her gaze beneath flat, foldless lids in a flat, round face. It would be rounder, but the boniness of the man's long, thin hands and the loose hang of his dusty clothes provide some explanation. His hair is beginning to straggle out of the ponytail.

He catches the meaning of her look, and says "I can pay" in a slightly high voice. He's already reaching into his pocket, and proof of his statement is on the counter: a handful of greasy, crumpled bills and various coins.

"'S not it," the woman says.

"Then what?" His tone of voice is one of someone trying to keep it modulated, soft, deferential. Trying, and not entirely succeeding.

"Out of hamburger." She knows, and the man at the counter knows, that behind her in the kitchen the cook is flipping one.

"I'll eat the bun."

"Those too."

"A glass of water." His stare hasn't left her face once, and the stares of the ranch-hands haven't left him.

The woman crosses her arms. "Look, we're not serving you."

"I can pay."

"Yeah, with the money they give you when you leave the chain gang." The man's fingers tense on the counter, and she continues. "Heard five minutes before you came in, Yao Wang who's coming from Port Heron and going to Alila and who better get on his way."

Yao straightens up. "I've walked thirty miles, I'm thirsty, and I can pay."

The woman glares. "Pay somewhere else, then, 'cause I don't serve convicts or parolees. Said on your papers you're dangerous. So you get out, or I call the sheriff and he puts you back where you come from." And she moves towards the phone hanging on the wall, infinitesimally, just enough that Yao notices.

Without another word, he stands, scrapes his money back into his pocket, and leaves. Flies buzz against the screen door after he shuts it, and a smell of cooking grease slips out and a smell of sunburnt grass slips in.

A few children stare at him as he makes his way down the street, and one throws a pebble, experimentally, and it misses him by several feet. Yao does not seem to notice. In a few of the peeling houses around him, cheap radios play garbled music, spilling into the twilight along with light from the cracks around the shutters.

In one of the buildings, the music is a little louder, a little less distorted, and the light mixes with the smell of something frying and with voices raised in conversation. When Yao enters, few people look at him. The proprietress glances up at him, smiles vaguely, and nods her head towards an empty chair. He sits, letting out a small sigh.

Five minutes pass, and then a man comes in the door and speaks hushedly with the woman. Their conversation punctuates itself with several glances towards Yao. Eventually, the woman stands and makes her way over to him, resting a hand on his shoulder. "You got to leave."

Yao stares at her, sees that she knows, and does not argue. Sullenly, he gets back to his feet, and as he leaves, the entire room turns to look.

The sun has dropped fast, and the temperature with it. Yao's clothes, too warm in the sun, are too cold for the night, and he draws the cheapjack jacket closer around him. Joshua Flat's houses are closed now, lights less frequent, and above it the sky stretches wide — beyond the mountains, very far, one could almost fancy they saw the lights from Port Heron. Above Joshua Flat, there are stars, and there is dust.

Yao is not quite sure where he is going — he cannot keep walking through the night, at least. Perhaps, if he found somewhere out of the way enough that he wouldn't be picked up for a vagrant, he could sleep.

A space beside the steps of some building seems likely as any other place, and Yao has slept in far worse, and he settles down in it, jacket pulled up over his head.

And then a voice wakes him: "Sir, would you like to come in?"

At this point, it is imperative that the reader know some of Yekateryna Chernenko.

She was in no way a high-ranking member of a religious order, as it was, and still is, difficult to be a high-ranking anything in that county. Her parents had preached before her, both father and mother at the pulpit and voices soft with reverence, and her younger brother and sister had both left the county when they could, for somewhere where the rains came.

Yekateryna had stayed. There was work to be done.

She was not a high-flown preacher; her sermons were calm and direct and delivered in a soft voice that churchgoers would sometimes have to strain to hear. They lasted as long as was needed to get her point across, no longer. Anyone who spent the time adding up how much money was given in collections, and then comparing it with how much money was given to those who needed it, would gain some comprehension of Yekateryna.

She knew how to farm, and in her youth she had worked alongside the farmers and laborers of Joshua Flat, offering and receiving advice, and even as she aged she still would visit the fields to speak to the workers when there was time, and to assist when there was not.

There were some who questioned the wisdom of allowing a woman, hands roughened from the hoe and neck burned from the sun and ash-blonde hair cut short, to preach with dust in her cassock and eyes lightened like the hazy edges of the sky. And Yekateryna would smile, a little sadly, and ask who else would? There were some who questioned the wisdom of Yekateryna living alone in the rooms next to the church, gate unlocked, and she would say that she had company, and not to worry.

Some of the older residents of Joshua Flat remembered when Yekateryna had been young, and had wept easily, but with conviction, and they knew that she still did, at vigils. She kept deathwatches and birthwatches and knew when a homily was and wasn't needed.

The only thing of high monetary value Yekateryna Chernenko owned was a silver service given to her by the Chetters after her tenth deathwatch for them. She ate off of them occasionally, and served guests with them.

Of course, this is not to say that Yekateryna Chernenko did not have faults. All humans do, but she strove to solve the problems hers caused — the tendency to wait too long on decisions, the weakness of will that still arose sometimes, she tried and therein came her conviction that others could, too, only needing to see how.

It is by the steps of her small home, next to her small church (both of which are still in Joshua Flat, though she no longer is) that Yao Wang sat to rest.

"What?"

The woman — Yao can see that much, though not much else, she's backlit and seems little more than a silhouette — repeats her question. "Would you like to come in, sir?"

Yao only stares dumbly at her. The invitation, the sir — he had walked miles and his mouth felt fuzzy with dust and he has in his coat pocket the papers declaring him parolee, dangerous, breaking and entering, multiple escape attempts and here this woman, apparently alone, is inviting him inside and calling him "sir".

"It gets cold here at night, you know," and oh God Yao knows, "and you look like you need a meal."

His eyes have adjusted a little to the light, and he squints at the woman. She is taller than him (many people are), and her short ash-blonde hair curves in towards her cheeks, and the plain high-necked nightgown she wears is covered in bright embroidery, and she holds out a blunt-fingered hand to him. "Please, come in."

Yao stands, still mute, without touching the hand. He follows her indoors, eyes flicking to the windows and doors in case he has to — leave, suddenly. There is not much else of note in the room, only a heavy cabinet and an assortment of mismatched chairs around a dinner table.

"Sit! Sit, please," the woman says, pulling out a chair. "I have already eaten but I can keep you company while you do, I know it does not look like much here but you need somewhere to stay." Yao sits warily, but his caution leaves him when the woman sets a plate in front of him, still warm and full of some sort of oat porridge with onions and pork. He wolfs it down, hunched close to the plate, still making no sound beyond chewing.

He is halfway through the plate before he notices that it gleams, that it's silver, this woman is giving him hot food on a silver plate, and the unlit candlesticks on the table are silver! Still, he feigns indifference, not a hard thing when there's still half a plate of food before him.

"You have not eaten well in a long time, have you?" The woman asks. Yao stares incredulously for a couple seconds and goes back to eating. What does she think, that on the chain gang they all had three meals a day?

Not long after, Yao has cleaned his plate, and looks up. The woman sits across the table from him, hands folded, and smiles again. "My name is Yekateryna."

"Yao," Yao answers. He sets down the fork. "You know I'm a convict, right?"

She nods.

"I have the papers and everything. They threw me out of the train-stop place and wouldn't serve me before that."

Yekateryna nods again, still smiling faintly, and Yao feels a sudden surge of anger, after so long not feeling much of anything, it doesn't make sense. "Why the hell did you let me in!"

"You needed a place to stay, I have an extra bed." Her voice has not changed at all. Yao settles back, again at a loss for words.

Yekateryna only smiles again. "I think you should go to bed, Mr. Yao. You must have had a long day."

The enormity of this — this woman, what she offers, beats at the corners of Yao's brain. He glances from the plate to the cabinet and back again, and at the lockless door.

"All right." He stands. "Where is it?"

He'll think over this — later. Later, he'll think.

Yao lies down on top of the bed, without even taking off his shoes, and is asleep in seconds.

At night, he wakes, unused to the softness of a bed. Glancing out the small window, Yao guesses that it's around two in the morning, and if he strains he can hear snoring from Yekateryna's room.

Quiet as air, he slips out of bed and takes one of the blankets with him. He pauses at the door, thinking for a second maybe I shouldn't, but the doubt is quashed swiftly. If she invited him in, she knew the risks. He holds his breath as he opens the door, anyway. It doesn't squeak.

Yao makes his stealthy way across the room towards the cabinet. That door, the cabinet door, does squeak, and it sounds like a trumpet call, and Yao freezes, half-madly expecting to be struck dead where he stands.

Nothing.

The silver service rests before his eyes, barely gleaming in the dull light of the yellow moon lancing through the windows, and Yao hastily packs the plates and serving spoons into the blanket he brought with him, glancing over his shoulder every couple seconds at the door to Yekateryna's room. There is no sound, no movement, and he half-wishes there were so she'd see, see she shouldn't have let him in and called him sir and fed him and given him a bed against all reason, against the papers in his coat —

He bundles the blanket shut, and slings it over his shoulder, mindless now of the muffled clanks, and runs out the back door, leaps the low garden wall, and makes off into the night.